Who Will Win Bihar?

English: Shashi Tharoor in the Global Redesign Session. Participants captured during the World Economic Forum's India Economic Summit 2009 held in New Delhi, 8-10 November 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The polls are all over the place, and both alliances are claiming a two thirds majority. So right now the picture is not clear at all. I am not sure, but at this juncture, I'd be surprised if Nitish loses. This was an election for the job of Chief Minister, and Nitish was the only one running.

Last year Nitish got a drubbing in Bihar for two reasons. One, Modi was a great candidate, he had both a lower middle class background and a low caste background, plus he projected development. And Modi was the only person in the country running for Prime Minister. Two, Biharis were in no mood to lose Nitish. The work Nitish had done since 2005 was his doing. Nobody else in his party could fill his shoes, and Jitan Ram Majhi proved that beyond doubt. I like the idea of a Mahadalit Chief Minister, but I like the idea of someone who can govern and give economic growth much more.

Nitish winning in Bihar is not bad news for Modi nationally. In fact, it is terrific news. Modi became Prime Minister last year, but nobody became Opposition Leader. Nitish will claim that seat if he wins. But Nitish will be limited to Bihar. He is not going to have an impact in Uttar Pradesh in 2017 which I expect the BJP to sweep like so much kura kachara. And Nitish is not going to be a factor in 2019. He campaigned with a Bihar@2025 promise. And the Bihari voters will know better than to let him off the hook.

Bill Gates, the richest, smartest philanthropist in the world also tried to do right by the poor people of Bihar. But Gates can not match Nitish. Political leadership is such a powerful weapon at the service of the poor. There is no substitute.

I am going to give Modi two more years before I start judging him. At least two more years. In my reckoning he has been excellent. India leads all countries in terms of how much FDI it has attracted so far this year. That is but one metric. I have watched him in action near daily since he won, and he has impressed me like few politicians I have followed over the years. He is extremely good. Right now I'd be surprised if 2019 becomes a worry for Modi. I expect him to take the Indian growth rate past 10% and to win an easy re-election in 2019.

The Indian media is not as sophisticated as the Bihari voter. The Bihari voter knows the difference between a national election and a state election. The India media? I am not so sure. If Nitish wins, the media that has spent over a year building up Modi like he were superman will spend about six months trying to question his every move. That is how they sell newspapers. They want little fights. They need to build up and then break down. Whereas the fundamentals of who Modi is and what he does will not have changed at all. Modi will keep showing up for work.

I have become a Modi fan. But I am also a Nitish fan. Nitish has been good for Bihar. Heck, he has turned a hopeless situation into something akin to a small miracle. Bihar's trajectory of the past decade has been unexpected, at least to me.

Nitish in Patna and Modi in Delhi is the best of both worlds, for Bihar as well as for India. Nitish doing the Opposition Leader role in Delhi would have caused a havoc. He might have been too effective. But Patna is a safe distance. And he will have a job to do.

A lot of people forget that Nitish was the first major Indian politician to have called Modi a future Prime Minister. I don't smell any personal dislike between the two. It would be good for Modi that someone of Nitish's caliber will now be Opposition Leader.

I just hope Nitish does not engage in knee jerk opposition. India needs thoughtful, constructive opposition, the kind Shashi Tharoor has offered at times.

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Megacities And Big Forests

We are moving towards megacities and big forests. Imagine an Amazon size forest in the United States. That would be a good thing.

Individuals Getting Paid
The Ultimate Megacity: 100 Million People

there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the US, and an additional 5.2 million people employed within the truck-driving industry who don’t drive the trucks. That’s 8.7 million trucking-related jobs...... truck drivers are well-paid. They provide a middle class income of about $40,000 per year. That’s a higher income than just about half (46%) of all tax filers, including those of married households. ...... They are also greatly comprised by those without college educations. Truck driving is just about the last job in the country to provide a solid middle class salary without requiring a post-secondary degree. Truckers are essentially the last remnant of an increasingly impoverished population once gainfully employed in manufacturing before those middle income jobs were mostly all shipped overseas. ...... we are potentially looking at well over 10 million American workers and their families whose incomes depend entirely or at least partially on the incomes of truck drivers, all of whom markedly comprise what is left of the American middle class. ........ On May 6, 2015, the first self-driving truck hit the American road in the state of Nevada. ....... In the case of self-driving trucks, one big improvement in particular is fewer accidents. ..... In 2012 in the US, 330,000 large trucks were involved in crashes that killed nearly 4,000 people, most of them in passenger cars. About 90 percent of those were caused by driver error. ..... That’s like one and a half 9/11s yearly. Human-driven trucks kill people. ..... Robot trucks will kill far fewer people, if any, because machines don’t get tired. Machines don’t get distracted. Machines don’t look at phones instead of the road. Machines don’t drink alcohol or do any kind of drugs or involve any number of things that somehow contribute to the total number of accidents every year involving trucks.

For this same reasoning, pilots too are bound to be removed from airplanes.

....... Robot trucks also don’t need salaries — salaries that stand to go up because fewer and fewer people want to be truckers. A company can buy a fleet of self-driving trucks and never pay another human salary for driving. The only costs will be upkeep of the machinery. No more need for health insurance either.

Self-driving trucks will also never need to stop to rest, for any reason. Routes will take less time to complete.

........ At 25 to 40 percent cheaper, the cost to ride the driverless public transit vehicles will be significantly less expensive than traditional buses and trains…

The vehicles are electric, rechargeable and could cost as low as $1 to $3 to run per day.

...... Uber is going all-in on self-driving vehicles to the point it wants to entirely eliminate car ownership as a 20th century relic. ......... “You’re not just paying for the car — you’re paying for the other dude in the car,” he said. “When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle.” That, he said, will “bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away.” ....... the elimination of entire industries built up around the existence of car ownership like: mechanics, car washes, parking, valets, body shops, rental companies, car insurance, car loans, and on and on. Even hugely expensive and capital intensive mass-transit infrastructure projects like streetcars and light rail can be dropped in favor of vastly cheaper on demand robotic “transportation clouds”, and all those construction and maintenance jobs right along with it. ...... Manufacturing has been shipped overseas to areas where labor is far cheaper because costs of living are far cheaper. Companies like Walmart have spread everywhere, concentrating a reduced labor force into one-stop shopping facilities requiring fewer total workers than what was needed with smaller, more numerous, and more widely spread Mom & Pop type stores. Companies like Amazon have even further concentrated this even further reduced labor force into automated warehouse centers capable of obviating stores entirely and shipping directly to consumers. ..... over 3 million unemployed truckers and millions more unemployed service industry workers in small towns all over the country dependent on truckers as consumers of their services. ..... This time, as is true of the effect of technology on jobs, it’s different. This time, there’s no need for entire towns to even exist at all. ...... Human labor is increasingly unnecessary and even economically unviable compared to machine labor. And yet we still insist on money to pay for what our machines are making for us. As long as this remains true, we must begin providing ourselves the money required to purchase what the machines are producing...... a 21st century economy shall be driven by human consumers, not human workers, and these consumers must be freely given their purchasing power. If we refuse, if we don’t provide ourselves a universal and unconditional basic income soon, the future is going to hit us like a truck — a truck driven solely by ourselves. ......

No one should be asking what we’re going to do if computers take our jobs. We should all be asking what we get to do once freed from them.

Self-Driving Trucks Are Going to Hit Us Like a Human-Driven Truck
The imminent need for basic income in recognition of our machine-driven future

Caputo

Have you seen her? She is amazingly ugly.

It was political. On both sides.

On the part of the New York City Democratic Party Machine. And my part.

2016 is not 2008.